Council holds unplanned closed door session

The Marshall City Council spent the first half hour of the Monday night meeting discussing how to discuss concerns over the pending sale of the 63-acre State Farm property at I-94 Exit 110 by area developer Trae Allman. Mayor Bruce Smith said he wanted to be able to explain to the public the process by which property is rezoned, the issue that brought the pending purchase to light last week. He added that he wanted to give the city manager direction in how to handle rezoning issues and pointed out that the council had never set goals for City Manager Chris Olson since he joined the staff in May The discussion included consideration of a possible workshop session and led into the decision with At Large Trustee Ron Goodwin voting against the issue and Luanne Miller absent to add a closed session to last night's agenda at the end of the meeting. When Open Meetings Act concerns were raised, Trustee Jim Dyer said "we could couch it as a personnel issue." The council at about 9 p.m. agreed to Dyer's motion to go into closed session to discuss economic development issues as a personnel matter with Olson.